Castlevania has never completely vanished, but it has certainly felt that way. Collections, collaborations, a now-defunct mobile game and a remake of a much-maligned arcade title have kept the series alive, yet it has been nearly two decades since the last proper 2D adventure. Coinciding with the franchise’s 40th anniversary, Konami has entrusted Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse to Evil Empire, the studio behind Dead Cells, which had already explored the series through its Return to Castlevania DLC in 2023. On paper, the partnership seemed like a natural fit. After spending time with the Switch version, however, it is clear that while Belmont’s Curse is a polished, handsome and often excellent action platformer, it struggles to establish an identity of its own. Its combat is frequently superb, its exploration less convincing, and its reverence for Castlevania sometimes comes at the expense of understanding what makes the series distinctive. It is an enjoyable return, but not necessarily the meaningful revival the franchise needed.
The story takes place in 1499, 23 years after the events of Dracula’s Curse. Paris has fallen under a demonic invasion, prompting Trevor Belmont to bring his daughter Rose along to learn the family trade. Rose combines the Belmont and Belnades bloodlines, and a curse that runs visibly along her arm adds another complication to her attempt to establish herself beyond her father’s reputation. Her late mother’s tarot deck serves as the foundation for the adventure. Major enemies are associated with individual cards, and defeating them captures their souls, grants Rose new arcana abilities and adds clues to the deck that point towards the next threat.
It is a useful framework for tying progression to the narrative, and the incorporation of French history and locations gives the adventure a setting that feels distinct from the series’ more familiar castles and villages. Belmont’s Curse also draws heavily on the Netflix animated series, including the return of some of its voice actors. That connection is not necessarily a problem, but it contributes to a story that feels considerably more talkative than the classic games. The captured souls become Rose’s constant companions, offering commentary and frequently bickering among themselves. Their exchanges can be entertaining in small doses, but as the group grows, the chatter begins to crowd out the atmosphere. Castlevania has always made room for theatrical characters and elaborate mythology, yet Belmont’s Curse often leans towards an anime-inspired tone that does not entirely suit the gothic world around it.
The difference is particularly noticeable when compared with the games associated with Koji Igarashi. Those adventures often let their settings, enemies and scattered pieces of lore carry much of the storytelling, encouraging players to piece together the mythology themselves. Belmont’s Curse is more interested in dialogue, character interactions and connections to other parts of the franchise. There is nothing inherently wrong with taking Castlevania in a more character-driven direction, and the story has enough worthwhile ideas to keep it moving. The problem is that the writing does not always justify the additional noise, while Rose herself struggles to become a particularly memorable new face for the franchise.
That lack of a distinct identity extends to her visual design. Castlevania has developed a recognizable artistic language over decades, with Ayami Kojima’s illustrations helping shape the series’ look for nearly 30 years. Her influence reaches beyond the games she directly illustrated, informing the franchise’s broader association with ornate gothic imagery, dramatic silhouettes and a particular sense of elegance. A new Castlevania character does not need to imitate Kojima’s work, nor should the series be expected to freeze its visual identity in place. However, a new direction still needs to feel deliberate and cohesive. Rose’s design instead feels busy and somewhat chaotic, making it harder for her to stand out as a character who could help define Castlevania’s future.
This is a larger concern than any one character model. Konami has not maintained a continuous run of traditional 2D Castlevania releases for roughly 17 years, leaving a considerable gap in the development of the series’ classic style. Evil Empire is an accomplished studio, and its work on Dead Cells demonstrates a strong understanding of fast, responsive action. That expertise does not automatically translate into an understanding of what makes Castlevania work, though. Different studios develop different habits and design assumptions, and the knowledge accumulated across a long-running franchise cannot simply be transferred by handing over its name and familiar elements. Konami’s role should extend beyond licensing the property. Creative oversight and a clear understanding of the series’ history are important when asking a new team to shape its next chapter. The finished game gives the impression that Belmont’s Curse understands many of Castlevania’s individual components without always understanding how they come together to form a distinct whole.
Fortunately, the combat is the game’s strongest argument in its favour. Anyone familiar with Dead Cells will recognize some similarities in the movement and responsiveness, although Belmont’s Curse is slower and more deliberate, and it is not a roguelike. Rose cannot sprint, but she has a slide, a back hop, a dodge, a holy light ability that functions like a parry, and a duck that proves more useful than it might initially sound. Her backstep is particularly satisfying, and the animation work gives every movement and attack a sense of weight. Enemies are also more reactive than in many previous entries, retreating from attacks, kicking Rose away or responding with moves that demand more than simply standing in place and swinging a weapon.
There are seven weapon classes, including a sword, a throwable lance, a rapier, dual blades, a greatsword, the cestus and the expected whip. Each has its own attack strings, and switching between weapons through the pause menu comes without a penalty. The cestus, a pair of brass-knuckle-style weapons that rewards sustained aggression with increasing damage, is particularly entertaining. It also reveals the developers’ affection for fighting games. After completing a combo, Rose performs a victory pose, with the animations cycling through stances that recall fighters such as Ryu, Chun-Li, Sagat, Mai Shiranui and Akuma. One even evokes Spider-Man from Marvel vs. Capcom 2, while a cestus air combo resembles Akuma’s aerial fireball. These references are amusing and fit a franchise that has occasionally flirted with fighting-game mechanics, from Alucard’s spell inputs in Symphony of the Night to Portrait of Ruin’s martial arts moves and Castlevania Judgment. Still, they also contribute to the sense that Belmont’s Curse is most comfortable assembling familiar ideas rather than establishing a new creative direction.
Relics add passive bonuses, including increased aerial damage and speed boosts after defeating enemies, while arcana abilities earned from bosses function as expanded versions of the series’ traditional sub-weapons. These include attacks such as a wall of fire, a giant fist, a petrifying glare and the Holy Cross. Specific challenges unlock upgrades for these abilities, giving combat a satisfying degree of customization without overwhelming the underlying action.
The bosses are another major highlight. Drawing on a range of cultures and legends, they offer distinct mechanics that require players to learn their patterns rather than simply overpower them. Some encounters incorporate elaborate traps or unusual restrictions, including a fight that marks Rose with a number representing how many hits she can survive before defeat. The bosses hit hard, but their attacks generally feel fair, and each victory grants an ability that helps open new routes through the world.
The regular enemy roster is less impressive. It is surprisingly thin, and tougher variations of familiar foes appear early enough that encounters can begin to feel repetitive. The weapons are also unevenly balanced. The greatsword is so slow that it is difficult to justify choosing it over faster alternatives such as the sword or lance. Meanwhile, the levelling system feels like a largely superficial RPG layer, offering incremental increases to health and attack power without adding much meaningful decision-making. It is easy to forget about until a level-up happens during a fight, and the resulting stat increases can make later encounters considerably easier than intended. Weapon upgrades are distributed awkwardly, too, with some of the strongest options tucked behind frustrating platforming challenges while others are simply lying around.
The difficulty is less consistent outside the boss fights. Certain rooms lock Rose inside and flood the screen with enemies and projectiles, turning encounters into chaotic endurance tests. Healing is limited to a supply of potions that refills at save rooms or after death, so running out during one of these battles can make the outcome feel inevitable. Save rooms are also spread far enough apart that failure can mean repeating lengthy sections, often encouraging players to rush past enemies on the way back rather than engage with them. The game includes modifiers for experience gains, damage dealt and received, potion capacity and respawn points before boss encounters. Their inclusion is welcome, but they also highlight how much the default balance can fluctuate. Difficulty options should accommodate different players, not feel like a substitute for a more carefully tuned progression curve.
Some of the design decisions also leave Belmont’s Curse caught between old and new approaches. Healing flasks that refill at save points and customizable map markers are sensible modern conveniences, but their value is diminished when enemies and candles can also provide healing items, while save points restore every defeated monster. Rather than creating a thoughtful balance between resource management and accessibility, these systems can feel like conflicting concessions. The game wants to preserve the pressure of older action platformers while making progression more forgiving, but it does not always reconcile those goals particularly well.
Exploration is where the tension between its influences becomes most apparent. The whip doubles as a grappling tool, and it is easily the best addition to the game. Swinging between yellow anchor points, pulling across gaps with pink ones and latching onto enemies for timed attacks adds a satisfying layer to both combat and traversal. Several platforming sequences are built around the mechanic, and while some are demanding, they rarely feel unfair. Even the spikes are merciful by the standards of the genre, usually resetting progress through a platforming section rather than killing Rose outright.
Beyond the whip, however, her movement options are fairly conventional. Wall jumping, double jumping and an air dash arrive later in the adventure, but they do little to push the genre forward. Symphony of the Night and its successors made exploration rewarding by continually changing how players understood and navigated their surroundings. Belmont’s Curse never quite reaches that point, and relatively few of Rose’s abilities feel inseparable from the identity of Castlevania itself.
There are still secrets worth finding. Hidden rooms and entrances can lead to entire sub-areas that are not immediately visible on the map, giving the world a greater sense of scale. The tarot deck’s clues also lend exploration a mystery-game quality, occasionally requiring players to reconsider locations they have already visited. Discovering the answer can be satisfying, even if the solutions tend to rely on familiar conventions such as false walls, environmental clues and dialogue hints. Players who have spent time with Hollow Knight or other modern Metroidvanias will find little that feels particularly novel.
The larger problem is how often the game discourages exploration. Fast travel arrives later than it should, and the rooms that enable it are spaced far apart. Save rooms cannot be used to teleport, making it less appealing to wander away from the intended route when doing so means a lengthy return trip. Barriers also prevent players from exploring certain areas until the game decides they are ready, sometimes making progression feel more rigid than an interconnected map should allow. Belmont’s Curse borrows the shape of a Metroidvania, but its priorities lean heavily towards action. The combat is excellent enough to carry much of the experience, yet the search and discovery that should complement it never receive the same attention.
Visually, the game makes a strong impression. Its painterly 2.5D environments and layered parallax backgrounds give locations a welcome sense of depth, whether exploring the oppressive atmosphere of Dracula’s castle or the quieter surroundings of a cemetery. Chapels, clock towers and mirror-lined halls evoke the franchise’s gothic foundations, even when the character designs do not always demonstrate the same cohesion. The soundtrack, composed by Danny Asadi, takes a largely original approach, layering driving percussion with the organs, harpsichords and strings associated with Castlevania. There are some memorable tracks, and the decision to reserve familiar musical arrangements for later in the adventure gives them added weight. Not every composition lingers in the memory like the series’ finest music, however, and the nostalgic musical references reinforce the game’s reliance on its history.
Performance on Nintendo hardware is more complicated. On Switch 2, the game generally runs at a stable 60 frames per second, although scanning the map can cause dips, and occasional graphical glitches crop up, such as a thrown axe remaining suspended in mid-air. The image is softer than it should be, but the experience remains playable and enjoyable on the newer hardware. The original Switch version makes more noticeable sacrifices to resolution and performance, which is particularly unfortunate in a game that depends on precise timing. If both versions are available, Switch 2 is the preferable option, while players on the original hardware may want to see whether future patches improve the experience.
Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse offers roughly 15 to 25 hours of content, depending on how thoroughly players explore, and launches on October 15 for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC via Steam. There is a lot to appreciate here. The combat is responsive and varied, the whip is an inspired addition, and the bosses provide some of the adventure’s strongest moments. Yet these strengths make its shortcomings more frustrating, not less. Belmont’s Curse has the tools to be an excellent action platformer, but its uneven exploration, inconsistent difficulty and uncertain artistic identity stop it from becoming the Castlevania revival its long absence deserves.
That is why the resemblance to Dead Cells matters beyond movement and combat. Belmont’s Curse can be an excellent action platformer while still being a disappointing Castlevania game. The issue is not that Evil Empire has brought its own experience and sensibilities to the project, or that a new entry must recreate the structure of an older game. Castlevania has room to evolve. But evolution requires a point of view, and too much of Belmont’s Curse feels like a collection of recognizable series elements arranged around a modern action game rather than a confident reimagining of the franchise’s strengths.
Konami has left a considerable gap in the development of traditional Castlevania games, and a new team cannot be expected to inherit decades of institutional knowledge simply by studying the back catalogue. That makes the publisher’s stewardship all the more important. Without assuming what happened behind the scenes, the finished game gives the impression that the series’ identity was treated as a set of references to include rather than a creative tradition to understand. The result is a game that knows how to remind players of Castlevania, but is less certain about what a new Castlevania should be.
The potential is unmistakable. Rose’s whip and the combat system provide a strong foundation, and the game’s best encounters demonstrate how effectively the series’ classic ideas can be reworked. But the exploration lacks depth, Rose does not emerge as a particularly distinctive new protagonist, and the visual direction struggles to establish the cohesion needed to carry the franchise forward. After so many years without a traditional new adventure, this was an opportunity to give Castlevania a fresh identity while preserving what made it special. Instead, the game often settles for reminding players why they liked it in the first place.
Castlevania deserves more than a competent revival built around nostalgia. Its history should give developers something to challenge, expand and reinterpret, not merely a library of ideas to revisit. Belmont’s Curse is enjoyable enough that it may satisfy players looking for a polished action game, and newcomers may have little trouble appreciating it on those terms. For a series that has been waiting so long for a proper new adventure, however, that is a surprisingly modest achievement. After all this time, Castlevania has returned, but Belmont’s Curse does not make a convincing case for where the franchise should go next. It borrows heavily from the series’ past without offering an equally compelling vision for its future, leaving the impression that the name on the box is doing more work than the game itself.
Disclaimer: A review key was provided.
Images were taken from Nintendo.com and are Pre-Day One Patch